


Ever After

by slowcookedvig



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Isolation, Motherhood, No Ending, No Plot, No Romance, after the endgame, just surviving day to day, no happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 02:04:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19879798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowcookedvig/pseuds/slowcookedvig
Summary: Oliver went off to save the world. Again. Without including Felicity in the decision. And he died. So now Felicity has been left to raise their daughter alone.No plot. No resolution. No happiness. Just survival, raising a kid, one day at a time, one year at a time.





	1. After

**Author's Note:**

> This is only partially written, and I don't plan to ever finish it. It wouldn't have had a happy ending from an Olicity fan point of view, anywayt. My personal view: Oliver is not redeemable as a romantic partner/husband. A happy ending for Felicity means an ending that is free from Oliver.
> 
> A little background: I used to be an Olicity fan. I am not an Olicity fan any more. I regret ever falling for the couple, and I'm ashamed to have fallen for what I interpret as a fantasy created by a sexual harasser (season 2, romance between a boss and assistant). And although AK has been fired, the show never took the opportunity to deal with the problematic things in AK's creative legacy (and in the work done by his collaborators). None of Felicity's concerns have ever been addressed (from Oliver wanting to die, to Oliver lying, to Oliver not including her as a partner in decisions) - Felicity has always eventually backed down, and the problems were papered over. At this point, any happy relationship between Felicity and Oliver tells women that their concerns are unimportant and irrational, that they should lose themselves in order to find happiness.
> 
> I do not accept those lessons.
> 
> This is a story about a woman and a mother who has been left behind and written out of a story in her "happy ending."

Felicity didn’t know how long she stood there, watching the spot where Oliver had disappeared. But she knew the sound that brought her back to reality. Mia’s cry. Hungry. Insistent. Oblivious to everything that had happened. Felicity turned and looked at the door of the cottage. Mia kept crying. And finally, Felicity walked up the steps, drawn by a need that was even stronger than her loss. 

The days were all the same. Wake to the sound of Mia crying. Get out of bed. Nurse her back to sleep. Check messages: e-mail, text, social media. All fully encrypted. Answer Alena’s questions about the company. Say something bland to John, to keep him from worrying. Lie to Dinah or Rene or Curtis or her mother. 

Order groceries to be delivered to a neutral location. Coffee. Ice cream packed in dry ice. Diapers.

Try to cook something healthy. Because she had a baby to take care of. That meant throwing burned eggs in the trash, and trying again, and finally giving up and microwaving something frozen that had been delivered. Which meant picking up groceries quickly. Which meant developing new ways to scan the area for threats, because the grocery drop-off was the perfect opportunity for an ambush.

And an ambush would leave Mia alone and defenseless. And that was simply not an option. 

Felicity had one job to do. And holy frack, she was not going to fail. Not this time.

***

Mia was crawling when the Waverider arrived.

Felicity ran out onto the porch, then turned around and pulled a cable out of Mia's mouth, and then carried her wailing baby out to meet her friends.

Sara's hair was half burned off, and her face was covered in soot. She was followed by a punk version of Amaya Jiwe, a blonde woman in a battered blazer, a dorky-looking guy in glasses, and Mick Rory. Mick, at least, looked normal. For him. But that wasn't saying much.

Felicity rocked Mia on her hip and waved the group into the cottage. "I don't have much to eat here," she apologized. "I gave up coffee because it keeps Mia from sleeping."

Mick had already found some teething crackers.

Sara shook her head at him. "We're not looking for food."

"Speak for yourself," Mick muttered.

"I thought the Waverider made food for you?" Felicity frowned.

"Food thing is broken," Mick grunted. "Nobody left to fix it."

"Nobody?" Felicity looked at the group. It was smaller than the last time she had seen them. 

"We got called to help save the universe," Sara explained. "Not everyone made it back."

"Who...?" Felicity looked from Sara to the others. "Besides Oliver...?" John had called to tell her. But he hadn't said much. There hadn't been much to say.

Sara nodded. "Not just Ollie. Thea went with him. And Ray's dead, too. His latest girlfriend was ordered to save the universe." She flicked a glance at the dork with the glasses. "Ray tried to help her. They both failed."

"Also Nate," Amaya added. Though her accent was British. Amaya hadn't had a British accent, as far as Felicity remembered. Not that it mattered. "And Zari Tomaz."

"And some friends of yours, I think - Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow?" Sara looked at Felicity's reaction and nodded. "And some of Kara Zor-El's friends from her Earth, too. I don't remember their names."

"Point is," Mick gestured with the last cracker. "We don't have any more geeks. They're all dead."

Felicity was already shaking her head. "No," she said. "This crisis already took Oliver." She looked at Mia, who had somehow found another cable to stuff into her mouth. "I promised him that I would take care of his daughter. You all save the world. I'm busy."

Sara looked her over. "All right."

And then a plume of smoke came out of the Waverider.

"Sara," said the woman in the blazer, "I don't think we're going anywhere."

"Or any WHEN," added the dork, with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Mia started crying, and Felicity shifted her to her other hip. "I don't know what I can do."

And then the house spoke. "Your dinner has thawed, Felicity." 

"Is that your house talking?" Sara asked.

"It's just an AI that I've been working on. Security, surveillance, baby monitoring, things like that." She glanced back at the house. "And cooking assistance."

"An AI." Brit!Amaya looked at Sara.

"Artificial intelligence," the woman in the blazer said. "Like Gideon."

Felicity looked them, then at Sara. "No. Uh-uh. Sorry. Nope."

"I get it," Sara said. "Really. But could you take a look at Gideon, at least? Because we're supposed to be helping to save the world. And right now, it doesn't seem possible."

"Ok. Fine." Felicity removed Mia's hand from her glasses. "But can somebody keep an eye on Mia?"

So somehow Mick Rory - plus Brit!Amaya, who could do all kinds of child-entertaining tricks - took over babysitting. And the woman in the blazer walked around, looking nervous and picking up dirty dishes to wash. And Sara sent the dork to pick up the latest grocery order.

And Felicity fixed Gideon.

Or at least, she tried. Gideon was some kind of future technology, with coding that left Felicity's jaw hanging open. But wires were wires, as Felicity had always said, and she could fix connections and replace burned-out circuits. And even in the coding, there were a few places where the processes could be made more efficient. Communication, for instance. Felicity had a lot of practice developing better comms.

Sara's crew tested the food replicator, used the medical bay to heal Sara's burns, and ran a few simulations of past events to make sure Gideon was working properly. And then it was time.

"You're sure you can't come?" Sara asked.

"I'm occupied," Felicity insisted, tucking Mia into her sling. "Until this little one can take care of herself... this is who I am."

"Okay," Sara conceded. "But when your little one isn't so little any more... maybe you can go back to saving the world?" Sara looked hopeful.

"I can't promise anything that far in advance," Felicity warned. She hadn't gotten much sleep back when she was Overwatch... but somehow she was more exhausted after a night with Mia than she had ever felt with Team Arrow. Planning more than 24 hours into the future just wasn't going to happen.

"We can show up whenever you're ready," Sara promised. "And not a moment earlier." She glared at her skeptical crew. "Have a little faith. We can time things well." She shrugged. "And if we don't, we just turn it into the perfect time."

***

The world didn't end.

And Mia took her first steps on her first birthday. At that point, Felicity had lived with Mia for longer that she had ever lived with Oliver. Not cumulatively - if you counted traveling after Ra's al Ghul's death, they had lived together for 28 months. But they had never gone more than 10 months without Oliver dying or going to prison or sending his kid away without telling her.

Not that Felicity had kept track or anything.

She took a video, encrypted it, and put the recording in her vault. Maybe John would visit, and she could show it to him. Maybe someday the world would go from 'not ended' to 'safe,' and she would introduce her mother to Mia. But things were definitely not good out there, so Felicity wasn't counting on it.

At least that meant there was demand for Smoak Technology security products. Alena had made a few sales, and the reviews were good, and Felicity had plenty of requests for new features. Sometimes, when Mia would go down for more than an hour, Felicity would actually have time to respond to them. And sometimes, she would borrow a bit of code from her notes about Gideon.

It's not a patent violation, or copyright violation, or whatever... not if the original code hadn't been written yet. Right?

***

"No shoes." Mia glared up at her mother, hands on her hips. Felicity knew that every gesture from her terrible two-year-old was a reflection of something that she had done. It didn't help.

"Yes, shoes," Felicity said. "The ice cream bowl broke. The pieces are sharp. Owie." She picked up one fragment of the pottery and touched with her finger, then made a face. "Ow!"

Mia ran forward into the mess and grabbed another piece. "Ow!" she yelled triumphantly.

"No," Felicity said. "Get back here."

Mia giggled and ran right, then left, then forward... and then stopped and shrieked.

Felicity picked her up. Sure enough, there was something sharp stuck in her foot. Felicity carried the toddler into the bathroom, pulled a pair of surgical gloves out of a drawer, and started cleaning the cut. It was deep. It would need stitches. And antibiotics. And... Mia was up to date on her tetanus shots, right?

She dabbed at Mia's foot with a wet cloth and shook her head. "You are your father's daughter," she said, and gritted her teeth.

There was one difference from patching up Oliver. When she had fixed up Oliver all those times, she had had help.

Later that night, after Mia had gone to sleep, Felicity sketched out plans for something like an off-road version of a Roomba. With a shop-vac. And a broom. And sensors to help it keep track of toddlers.

***

Felicity was trying to get Mia to come down from a tree when Nyssa showed up.

Mia was four. Four! Felicity had been outside with her, enjoying the early fall sunshine, when Alena had called. Normally Alena texted, or sent encrypted messages through the company message system, so this time it was clearly urgent. But years afterward, Felicity wouldn't remember what the issue had been, because she turned around, and Mia was gone. 

The possibilities that flashed through Felicity's mind - a kidnapping by an escaped criminal, a murder by a previously unknown family member, an abduction by aliens - would have been paranoid, if they hadn't been things that Felicity had seen through the years. So she was relieved to hear her daughter's voice coming from ten feet in the air. Despite the lack of an obvious way up, or down. There was a ladder somewhere, maybe in the shed at the back. But in order for Felicity to get it, she would need to take her eyes off of Mia. And that had already gone badly once in the past two minutes, so she wasn't about to do it again.

Felicity had been trying to talk Mia through the problem - without any success, or even much attention from Mia - when she heard a rustle behind her. Too close behind her. Felicity spun, pulled out the gun that she had been carrying for four years without ever shooting it... and was immediately flipped onto her back and disarmed.

"If you carry a weapon, you should practice with it," Nyssa said, offering her a hand.

Felicity climbed to her feet on her own. Yikes. Her core strength was definitely not what it had been before Mia was born. But time to do yoga, or pilates, or even the basic physical therapy exercises on the list that Dr. Schwartz left with her after the last well-child visit... that time pretty much didn't exist when you had a very active preschooler and a company to run remotely.

Nyssa looked up at the tree while Felicity brushed herself off. "Mia Smoak," Nyssa commanded. "Come down from that tree." 

Mia frowned down at her. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Nyssa Raatko," Nyssa replied.

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," Mia said.

"I am not a stranger." Nyssa watched Mia for a moment. "Do you know how to get down?"

"She doesn't want to," Felicity grumbled.

"I don't know where to put my hands," Mia said.

"I will guide you," Nyssa offered. 

"I'll... get a ladder," Felicity said.

By the time Felicity got back, Mia was on the ground, watching Nyssa demonstrate how to look for other handholds and footholds. "You should never go into something unless you know how to get out," Nyssa advised.

Mia nodded solemnly.

"Try again," Nyssa ordered.

And Mia did. Up two handholds and then down. Up three handholds and then down. Four. Five. Six. Until she climbed even higher in the tree than she had been the first time. 

"Mommy! Look!" Mia waved.

"I see." Felicity bit the inside of her lip.

"You may go back to your phone," Nyssa said. "I will watch your daughter."

Hours later, Mia settled down for a nap - her first nap in two years - and Felicity looked awkwardly at Nyssa. "I feel like I should offer you a pile of cash for babysitting."

"I would accept a glass of water," Nyssa replied.

"Right. Of course. Because chasing Mia is hard." Felicity headed for the kitchen and opened a cupboard. Nyssa followed her. "So. How did you know Mia's name? Or the fact that she exists? Or where to find either of us?"

"I received a text from Sara's ship," Nyssa replied. "It said that you needed help. It appears that the text was correct."

Felicity couldn't argue with that. 

Nyssa moved into the spare bedroom. It had been Felicity's office, but it didn't take much work to move all the computers into Felicity's bedroom. Especially with two pairs of eyes to watch Mia. And so Nyssa taught Mia to do handstands and leap off of ridiculously high objects and all sorts of other things that Felicity wouldn't have been capable of, even if she had still been doing yoga. And Felicity coded upgrades to the Archer program and sent them off to Alena, and approved the deals that Alena was making, and even programmed drones to pick up the food delivery so they could receive fresh things more often.

And the deliveries included wine. For the first time in years. It had been too easy to drink too much after Oliver left, and Felicity had learned the hard way that things that numbed the pain weren't compatible with caring for a baby. Especially with caring for a baby that took after her father.

But a glass of wine in the evening, with Nyssa, after Mia had fallen asleep? That was nice. Wine, and chocolate. And adult conversation.

"You got a text from Sara?" Felicity asked. Nyssa hadn't been there long, and the routine was still new. There was a lot of catching up to do. "I'm glad she survived everything. How is she doing?"

"Not from Sara," Nyssa shrugged. "From her ship."

"From Gideon?" Felicity smiled. "It sounds like my repairs worked."

Nyssa looked confused.

"Back when the world was ending," Felicity tried to explain. "Sara and her crew came by. They needed help that I couldn't give them... but I helped fix their AI. Gideon. I'm glad to hear that she survived, and is still out there."

Nyssa's gesture might have been a nod, and might have been a shrug, and might have been some kind of non-committal gesture peculiar to the League of Assassins. "I did not see the ship," she said. "There was only a text."

"But you came," Felicity frowned. "It must have been a pretty compelling text."

Nyssa gave the same shrug/nod gesture. Felicity considered calling it a _shnod_ , but decided that sounded too silly. "That is the role of a sister-wife."

Felicity shook her head. "I thought we agreed that you wouldn't call me that. Years ago. Back when you ended your League 'marriage' to Oliver."

"A marriage can be ended easily," Nyssa said. "But the role of sister-wife is deeper. It does not end. Not when a marriage is dissolved. Not when the man dies." She smiled. "One of my mother's sister-wives taught me to fight. Another taught me to cook, and another to read." 

Felicity made a face. "How many wives did Ra's have?"

"He was Ra's al Ghul," Nyssa said simply, as if it explained everything.

"So?" Felicity pushed. She had already finished one glass of wine.

"Any woman in the League could be his," Nyssa explained.

"So every woman in the League was a sister-wife?" Maybe the wine wasn't helping, because Felicity was having trouble figuring out the relationships. 

Nyssa nodded. "And they shared care of the League's children." She raised her eyebrows at Felicity. "You should have called on me before this. No woman can raise a child alone. How could one person be capable of all those things - cooking and teaching and wiping tears and enforcing the rules?"

When she put it like that... Felicity shook her head. "That's not the way it works in this culture," she said. "We can have it all."

Nyssa looked confused. "All of what?"

"All..." Felicity looked at her empty glass. She couldn't actually remember much of the past four years. Except for the exhaustion. She remembered that.

"You do not need to do it all, Felicity Smoak," Nyssa promised.


	2. The Frame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from an "inspirational" quote seen in a photo on Twitter: 
> 
> "Once you become a MOTHER,  
> you stop becoming the PICTURE  
> and start becoming the FRAME."
> 
> Creeps me the hell out. But that's what the show canon implies became of Felicity.
> 
> I wrote this chapter to give Felicity a perspective, even if her world is now defined entirely by her role as Mia's mother.

Nyssa came and went - she would stay at the cottage with Mia and Felicity for a week, or a month... and then suddenly she would be gone. "I am not a nanny," she clarified the first time she left. She never said it directly, but Felicity got the feeling that Nyssa's ideal world would include an indefinitely large number of sister-wives. But Alena was busy running the company, and wasn't particularly interested in raising a child. And Felicity wasn't about to contact any of the other people she knew. The news in the rest of the world was bad, and getting worse, and she didn't want her daughter to have anything to do with any of it. 

So Nyssa's visits were a welcome relief - a chance for Felicity to hack the MIT admissions office to get William into college, or to develop a new capability for Archer, or to invent another type of robot to protect the property. 

Or to figure out how to start home-schooling a kindergartener.

"Let's try counting the spoons again," Felicity cajoled. "First spoons. Then ice cream."

Mia glared. "One," she said. "Two. Ten."

"That's not what comes after two," Felicity corrected. "Try it again." There were only seven spoons. Felicity had started switching the number after she realized that Mia was just telling her what Mia thought Felicity wanted, rather than counting the spoons so quickly that she couldn't bother saying all the numbers.

"I want ice cream," Mia complained. 

_Mommy wants ice cream, too_ , Felicity thought. But she didn't say it out loud. 

"Mommy, you want ice cream, don't you?" Mia wheedled.

Ok. So Felicity had said it out loud in the past. Many, many times in the past. And she regretted it.

"Nyssa Raatko is at the gate," the house AI announced. "Shall I let her in?"

"Yes. Please." Felicity's tone was a bit more fervent than she had intended, but fortunately, Mia was already running out the door, pigtails coming loose as she raced to meet her favorite teacher.

"Nyssa! Watch! I can do twenty somersaults!" Mia dove to the ground. And sure enough... she did exactly twenty somersaults. So maybe she was actually learning to count, after all.

Nyssa's arms were full of packages. "What are these?" Nyssa asked. "And why did you ship them to five different aliases?"

"They're guides to home-schooling," Felicity replied. "They would be an obvious clue that a child is here. And I didn't want to leave a trail that any curious hacker could follow."

Nyssa just handed two of the boxes to Felicity.

Felicity re-balanced them. "Come inside." But she didn't actually need to say anything. Mia had already grabbed Nyssa's hand and was dragging her across the yard.

"I drew pictures," Mia whispered loudly. "They're secret, but I can show them to you."

Nyssa raised her brows at Felicity, but followed Mia into the house.

***

The weeks when Nyssa was gone were harder. Felicity knew that her daughter needed to learn to read, and write, and do math, and code, and learn history and science and art. But the boundaries between school and play, or comfort and discipline, or Mia-time and Mommy-time... those were hard. Felicity gave in to the urge to set up Mia with kid vids - not streaming, not without carefully wiping the information that would be sent to the companies that would sell Felicity's entertainment preferences to anyone who could pay. But bootlegged videos, acquired through careful hacking - those were ok.

Disney movies. Cartoons. Old episodes of Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers.

Though Felicity didn't screen them carefully enough.

"Mommy, what's a neighbor?" Mia asked.

Felicity looked at the screen and saw a man in a cardigan, putting on his shoes.

Mia tilted her head. "Is Nyssa our neighbor? She brings us packages like the postman." 

Felicity sighed with relief. "Yes, honey, Nyssa is our neighbor."

Mia nodded and went back to the video. 

Sesame Street created more challenges. "Mommy, I want a friend."

Felicity looked at the screen. Big Bird was singing. "Maybe you have friends," Felicity said. "You know how nobody but Big Bird can see Mr. Snuffleupagus?"

Mia nodded.

"Well... maybe you have a friend that you can't see. And you just need to look for them." Felicity turned back to the screen. Alena has sent a long list of potential customers, and Felicity was trying to vet them before approving the sales.

"Oh," Mia said. "Ok." She got up and headed for the door.

"Mia, honey, where are you going?" Felicity was on her feet immediately. No outside time without Felicity or Nyssa. That was the rule. So nobody could kidnap her. And so Felicity would have an easier time going back to all the satellite images and carefully scrubbing any sign of a child from all of them.

"I want to look for a friend," Mia said.

"Maybe there's a friend under the bed," Felicity said. "Try there."

Mia went into the bedroom, and Felicity turned back to Alena's request. She couldn't remember where she had left off, but none of them looked problematic, so she approved them all.

*** 

Mia was six when MIT found them.

Well, didn't actually find _all_ of them. Just Felicity. And really, just her address. And just with a piece of junk mail looking for donations to the alumni annual fund. But given that Felicity had been hacking them to keep track of William's progress... well, it was quite a shock to get an envelope with that familiar logo on it.

Nyssa delivered the envelope, along with the rest of the mail. Everything else was generic junk - an ad for hearing aids, a notice about a sale on trucks in the next town over, a couple political flyers. They had managed to go for six years without receiving anything targeted at Felicity - no computer catalogs, nothing selling toys or children's clothing, nothing. A few years ago, Felicity had deliberately gotten onto the mailing lists for a few unlikely companies - one selling upscale cookware, another for farm equipment. After all, the lack of junk mail would have been as suspicious as mailings that were correctly targeted.

And now she had been found. By MIT, which was the worst of all possible institutional stalkers. Because if someone wanted to find Felicity, MIT would be the first place they would hack.

Alena did her best to look innocent on the video when Felicity called her.

Felicity didn't want to hear any of it. "I have been in the MIT system. Repeatedly. They didn't know where I was six months ago. They didn't even have a good starting point."

"I'm sure they have the best alumni tracking that's out there," Alena deflected. "They find my new address even before I move."

"They mentioned Smoak Tech. Specifically." Felicity glared at Alena's face on her screen. "So I looked at the corporate records. Alena, MIT is one of our clients."

"Well, they seemed like a good customer. Considering that we're both alums." Alena tried to smile.

"No. No, they are not a good customer. They are the WORST, Alena." Felicity was furious. "We're selling privacy solutions. Not tools to let universities stalk their alums."

"And surveillance," Alena reminded her. "We're also selling surveillance. Privacy and surveillance go together."

Felicity just shook her head. 

"If they hadn't bought that product from Smoak Tech, they would have gotten the same tool from someone else," Alena argued. "From our competition. And our competition would have used it as a sales pitch. You don't know how many other contracts we've gotten because of the MIT one."

"Alena..." Felicity started.

"Felicity." Alena cut her off. "You gave me the job of running this company. You told me to make sure that you had enough money to live in your private little haven with your daughter, and you've approved everything that I've done. Including this. So don't _Alena_ me." She shook her head back as Felicity tried to talk. "No. Either you let me do my job, or you leave the company and do your own thing."

The screen went blank. 

Felicity eventually apologized. She couldn't leave the company. It had her name. It had her code. And there was no way she would have the time - or ideas - that she would need if she wanted to start another company from scratch.

After that, Alena didn't ask Felicity for permission very often.

As long as Felicity's privacy remained intact, she decided not to worry about it.

***

Mia's eighth birthday was interrupted by a call for help.

Not a literal call, as in someone yelling. Just a text from an old number, one that hadn't contacted Felicity in several years. But everything from that number, and several others, was routed directly to Felicity's hard drive. Not to her current cell. Not to her tablet. Not to anything that was remotely connected to Smoak Technologies. 

Dinah Drake was part of Felicity's old life. And nothing from that life - well, ok, nothing except for half of Mia's genetic material, and a few of Nyssa's memories - nothing _else_ from that old life was allowed into this one.

Felicity texted back later, after her child had collapsed from a sugar crash and Nyssa had gone for a walk around the perimeter of the property. But Dinah wasn't the one who answered.

 _It's Zoe_ , the text responded. _Zoe Ramirez. I found Dinah's old phone._

Zoe was what, William's age? So a young adult. Not a kid any more.

 _How can I help you?_ Felicity texted back.

 _I'm in trouble,_ Zoe replied. _I remember you used help my dad._

 _Sometimes,_ Felicity responded. (When he wasn't being an ass, she thought. But she kept that to herself.) _What do you need?_

 _I need to hide from the police,_ Zoe responded.

Felicity stared at her phone. No. Hiding Zoe Ramirez from the police would lead to the police finding Felicity, which would lead to the police finding Mia, which would lead to... Felicity wasn't willing to think about what would happen next.

 _Felicity?_ Zoe texted.

"Felicity?" Nyssa called from the doorway. "Where are you?"

"Back here," Felicity responded to Nyssa. "Are you willing to talk to a young woman who has gotten over her head in something?"

"Always," Nyssa replied.

Nyssa became the courier between Felicity and Zoe. And Zoe's friends. The Canaries. As if one Canary at a time hadn't been enough. Felicity didn't want to meet them in person, didn't want to be dragged back into that life. But she could wipe the info from old phones and turn them into burners, and set up difficult-to-hack comms, and occasionally look into situations where the Canaries needed more sophisticated surveillance than they could get hiding in back alleys. 

And in all the thinking about Zoe's problems, Felicity forgot that her eight years with Mia had lasted longer than the time she had spent knowing Mia's father.

***

The Canaries weren't very good at staying compartmentalized.

Felicity looked at her phone, rolled her eyes, and deleted the text. "I _hate_ vigilantes," she grumbled as she began to wipe all records of the contact from several devices and accounts.

Ten-year-old Mia looked up from her book. "What are vigilantes?"

Felicity shook her head. Mia's hearing was better than her focus. At least when it came to reading. "Annoying people," Felicity answered.

"Like telemarketers?" Mia asked.

"Not exactly." Felicity picked up her own book. "Come on. We're reading."

Mia rolled her eyes. "You started it, Mom," she reminded Felicity.

It was even more annoying because it was true.

*** 

Imaginary friends hadn't gone over well when Mia was six. At twelve, on the cusp of puberty? Forget about it.

"I've never seen a boy," Mia declared one day.

"That's because you didn't actually study your biology," Felicity replied. 

Mia rolled her eyes. "In _real life_ , Mom. You know what I meant."

Felicity just looked at Mia.

"You don't want me to meet boys." Mia's statement was flat. It wasn't a question.

Felicity sighed.

"Why?" Mia demanded. "Are you afraid I'll get knocked up by some guy who leaves me?"

Felicity frowned. "Where did you learn that language?"

But Mia was on a roll. "That's what happened to you, isn't it? You met some guy, you got knocked up, he ditched you..."

"Enough." Felicity stood. Her daughter was nearly as tall as she was, which ruined the effect. "Your father did not _knock me up and ditch me_."

"Oh yeah?" Mia rolled her eyes. "Then where is he?"

"Your father is gone because he is a hero," Felicity responded. "That's what heroes do. They sacrifice everything."

"If he's such a hero, why don't the books talk about him?" Mia had been studying history.

Felicity sighed. "Because that's what happens to heroes," she said. "They are never treated fairly by the people that they save."

***

After that conversation, Felicity made a point to show Mia pictures. Pictures of Oliver holding Mia. Pictures of Felicity and Oliver together - at their wedding reception, at parties, on the beach in Bali. It had been a long time since Felicity had looked at those pictures. Twelve years.

Felicity remembered most of what had happened when those pictures were taken. But, try as she might, she couldn't remember how it had felt - his hand as she pulled him through a market, his arm around her waist, his lips on hers. His voice.

She couldn't remember what he felt like. What he sounded like. What he smelled like.

But she didn't have much time to linger over those lost memories. Her daughter needed something, or the Canaries texted, or Alena wanted some improved code.

***

When Mia was 15, she beat Nyssa in a fight for the first time.

They were rolling on the ground, not punching each other. Which was good. Because Felicity did not want any brain damage for either her daughter or her friend. But somehow, Mia managed to flip Nyssa over and get her into a choke hold.

It wasn't clear which one was proudest when they came to tell her. She didn't tell them that she had been watching out the window - she let them describe the entire fight, move by move, and pretended that she understood the words they were using. 

"There is not much more that I can teach her," Nyssa said later, over a glass of wine. "Not unless you allow her to use a bow."

Felicity shook her head. "You know how I feel about that."

"You should fear a bored teenager more than you fear your daughter's inheritance," Nyssa said. And she left it at that.

Three days later, Felicity took the bow and quiver out of the mothballs and left them sitting on the porch. 

***

"Mia wants to go into the city." Nyssa looked at Felicity over the rim of her coffee cup. The days of staying up past Mia's bed time were past; these days, they had to get up early to have conversations. But Felicity couldn't sleep after the birds started singing, so that was fine.

Unlike Nyssa's suggestion.

"No." Felicity didn't even look up from her coffee.

"Your daughter is sixteen," Nyssa pointed out.

"She is," Felicity agreed. "And when you were sixteen, you had already started killing people. But we are not raising an Assassin."

"The Assassins are gone," Nyssa agreed.

"And the city isn't safe. It never really was, but now it's worse. What could she do there? Join the Canaries?" Felicity got up to rinse out her mug.

"What can she do here?" Nyssa asked. "Do you expect your daughter to hide from the world forever? Just you and her?"

"Not forever," Felicity conceded. "But until she's ready. She's just a teenager."

"You went to MIT when you were her age." Nyssa got up and poured herself another cup.

"But Mia isn't interested in tech," Felicity said. "She's barely interested in reading. She hates math. MIT would eat her alive."

"That is not the point." Nyssa added sugar and cream to her mug. "You traveled across the country alone. You dyed your hair."

"I got into some very bad relationships," Felicity said.

"You lived with people who weren't your mother," Nyssa finished. "Which is what Mia needs."

"I was too young." Felicity shook her head. "I thought I was ready. But I wasn't. I won't let Mia make my mistakes."

***

"You really want me to take this." Nyssa looked at the wooden box.

"Yes," Felicity said. "Back to the island. Where it belongs."

"This is a mistake, Felicity Smoak. You should not fear what your daughter will discover." But Nyssa picked up a hammer and started nailing down the lid.

"You can leave out her bow. And the tennis balls. But the rest of this..." Felicity sighed. "We left that life behind a long time ago."

"You cannot control what your daughter will become," Nyssa warned.

"I can try." Felicity hefted one side of the box. The knot in her back twinged. Frack. That muscle would keep her awake for a week.

They lugged the box out into Nyssa's car - yes, a former Assassin actually could get a driver's license, especially when Felicity Smoak knew how to hack the database of the Department of Motor Vehicles - and put it into the trunk.

Nyssa drove away without saying anything else.

It wasn't until several days had passed that Felicity realized that she had asked Nyssa to go back to the place where it had all begun for her, as well. Maybe it hadn't been fair to send Nyssa to the place where she had found Sara.

***

"Where's Nyssa?" Mia stirred more granola into her yogurt. "It's my birthday tomorrow. She'll be here. Won't she?"

Nyssa hadn't been back since leaving with Oliver's old box. Felicity hadn't really expected to see her, but her continued absence felt like a hole in the middle of the family. Especially as the weeks stretched into months.

"I don't know," Felicity replied. "Nyssa is never early or late."

"Yeah, yeah, she always arrives precisely when she means to." Mia rolled her eyes. "She's not a wizard, Mom."

"Still," Felicity said. "Nyssa lives her own life. She just visits ours. And we should be grateful for all the time that she has spent with us."

Mia's eyes narrowed. "You know something."

Felicity made her best innocent face.

"Do you know where she is?" Mia glared at her.

"No." That much was honest, and Felicity knew that Mia would be able to tell.

Mia's face fell. "Then how do you know she's ok?" She pointed her spoon at Felicity's tablet. "You always tell me that it's a dangerous world out there. Don't you worry about Nyssa going out into it?"

Felicity shook her head. "Nyssa Raatko can take care of herself."

Mia shook her head back. "Sometimes she is too sore to grapple. Her back hurts. She just watches me, instead of fighting." She stopped and stared at Felicity. "You really had no idea."

It was true. Felicity's joints and back weren't what they had been in her twenties. But Nyssa had always seemed indestructible. And ageless.

"We need to find her." Mia looked at Felicity. "Mom. We need to find her."

Felicity sighed. "Nyssa will be found if she wants to be found." She got up and picked up the bowls. "There is nothing that we can do."

***

Mia's birthday came and went, with no sign of Nyssa. Felicity made a cake - she had been practicing for years, and could finally manage something edible - and sang. And then they put on a movie. And then Mia was seventeen.

The next morning, Mia was late to breakfast. Felicity decided not to worry about it for an hour. Or two hours. But by noon... Ok. That was long enough.

Felicity knocked on Mia's door, then waited. There was no response. She knocked again, and called her daughter's name, and offered leftover cake for breakfast.

Still nothing.

So Felicity broke the number one rule of parenting a teenager, and opened the door.

There was a lump in the middle of the bed.

It didn't move.

Felicity weighed the possible hazards of awakening Mia against the possibility that her daughter needed medical attention, and finally decided to pull the covers off of Mia's head.

Pillows. The only things in the bed were pillows.

Felicity dropped the covers and started looking around the room. Mia's favorite clothes were gone, along with her toothbrush and the backpack that she used to carry her fighting sticks for work-outs with Nyssa.

Frack.

The cameras had been gone from Mia's room for years, and Mia knew how to avoid the alarms on the perimeter. Of course, those alarms were designed to warn Felicity about anyone who approached the cottage. She wasn't watching for people who left.

 _She'll come back_ , Felicity told herself. _She'll walk toward the nearest town and realize that she's hungry and she forgot her second-favorite shirt. She'll be back by dinner_.

Mia wasn't back by dinner.

Or by 9 pm. Or 10 pm. Or midnight.

Felicity paced. She ran through the security footage at the gate, and from all the places where packages had been delivered over the years. She pinged Mia's cell phone (which had been left at the bottom of a drawer in her room). She ate ice cream.

At midnight, she started to hack.

She'd been into the system at MIT, and at the various firms that Smoak Tech used to handle their money. How else could she keep track of William's financial situation? But, although she had spent years working on AIs and surveillance techniques for Smoak Tech, and had recently been helping the Canaries solve specific problems, she was out of practice when it came to stalking the entire outside world.

Once upon a time, she had been good at this. Not just at creating her own systems, but at breaking into any security camera or satellite feed or biometric scanner that was connected to any other system, anywhere in the world.

If anyone could track her daughter, it was Felicity Smoak. The old Felicity Smoak.

And yes, Felicity caught glimpses of her. The first one was at a charging station - nobody used gas anymore, which was good, because of climate change, but 'gas' stations were still a thing. Mia got out of the passenger's side and... did she actually steal that energy bar? No, she had cash. Huh. So Mia knew about the cash that Felicity had hidden around the cottage in case they had to flee the country and Felicity didn't have time to create a fake debit account. Ok. Well. That was better than shoplifting.

Perhaps it had been unwise to raise a daughter with no official identity in a world where money was pretty much all online, and tied to a biometric ID. (Mostly managed through Smoak Tech products. Alena had been quite proud of dominating that market.)

But aside from the money problems... Mia appeared to be hitchhiking. The car left without her - she waved, she wasn't abandoned, it was ok. Except that Mia would need another ride, and Felicity was worried about anyone who would pick up a teenaged girl in the middle of the night. And then Mia went into one of the rooms that truck drivers could rent to get some sleep. She was alone. And it looked like the doors locked. So maybe it was ok.

Mia didn't come out for hours, and Felicity fell asleep at the keyboard.

When Felicity woke up, Mia had left. She showed up briefly in the security footage, a couple hours before Felicity checked. She walked by a camera once, and then again, and got into a car. And then was gone.

At least Mia was riding with a woman this time.

Felicity managed to catch the license plate number on a surveillance camera, cross-referenced it with the woman's driver's license, and calculated a predicted destination based on the woman's job and buying habits.

Mia was headed for the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think Mia was right about Oliver: he impregnated Felicity and then left her. Which is a pattern for him - he did the same thing to Samantha. (And later abandoned Felicity to raise William when he decided to go to jail.)


End file.
